Open Veins by Maximiliano Tineo, Sarah Schneider and Stella Meyer at PhMuseum Lab

The exhibition delves deep into the still-open wounds of colonialism and the exploitation of natural resources in Latin America, exploring the complex relationships between power, nature, and society.

Overview

Maximiliano Tineo’s El Rey Blanco starts from the South American legend of the Sierra de la Plata, a silver mountain believed to be located in the lands of the so-called Rey Blanco. Following the traces of this imaginary place, Tineo encounters two real locations: the silver mine of Cerro Rico de Potosí, Bolivia, and the Lithium Triangle, located between Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia. Sarah Schneider and Stella Meyer's Yo Bebo Leche Y Agua is instead unfolding from a village, Puerto Guadal in Chile, and a law that marked its existence: the Código de Aguas, enacted in 1973 by Pinochet, decreeing water privatization in Chile.

Silver, lithium, and water are the raw materials at the center of these projects, which reflect on broader geopolitical and environmental dynamics, and on how they were influenced by colonial Eurocentric perspectives. During the colonial era, the southern hemisphere was in fact represented as terra nullius - a land belonging to no one, and from which infinite resources could be drawn. This philosophy, which is still impacting on our perception of nature, on debates over sustainable progress and over the distribution of wealth, has triggered cycles of violence and abuse, endlessly repeating themselves across different circumstances and places. At their center is a shared vision of Latin America, and of the Planet more broadly, as a pool of resources to be extracted, privatized, and exploited.

In The Open Veins of Latin America (1971), Uruguayan poet and writer Eduardo Galeano recounted the plundering of Latin American resources through five centuries of humiliation and poverty. The magical realism of Maximiliano Tineo's El Rey Blanco, and the contemporary documentary of Sarah Schneider and Stella Meyer's Yo Bebo Leche Y Agua seem to dialogue with this literary classic, showing us how these open veins - veins rich in minerals, in natural and human resources - are still an extremely actual theme linked to the economic, social, and cultural subordination upon which we are building the future.

Both works were developed as part of the third edition of Criticae, PhMuseum's Online Masterclass on Documentary Photography led by Max Pinckers and Laura El-Tantawy between October 2023 and May 2024.

Admission is free, no reservation is required. The exhibition will be open on Thursdays, December 12th and 19th, from 5pm to 7pm, afterwards by appointment.